Page 56 of Dead Beside the Thames
Weatherspoon pulled upturned chairs off the round tables and set them on the floor, creating a large circle around one ofthe tables nearest the bar. Only once everyone who had ventured inside and wished to sit had claimed seats did Weatherspoon pull up a chair for himself and settle his bulk upon it. He didn’t react when O’Donnell and Morgan drifted as unobtrusively as they could to stand behind him. Instead, Weatherspoon—like the rest of him, his head and features were large, but his face gave the impression of being comfortably worn, and his brown eyes held no hint of either shame or malice—focused his clear-eyed gaze on Stokes and said, “Right, then. What do you want to know?”
In the silence that followed the simple question, Penelope studied Weatherspoon. He was truly huge, with massively muscled arms straining the sleeves of his cloth jacket, and his hands, clasped in his lap, looked more than adequate to the task of strangling a brute bigger than Jonathon.
She was on Stokes’s left, sitting a little way back from the table across which Weatherspoon faced them. The others were still settling in their seats when a faint creak reached her ears, and she glanced toward the alcove that screened the front door just in time to see a shadow slide inside—a very tall man moving slowly and carefully.
Penelope turned back to the table. The company had been focused on Weatherspoon; no one else seemed to have noticed the interloper. As she had a very good idea of his identity, she made no comment and gave her attention to the proceedings as Stokes commenced by asking, “Did you strangle Viscount Sedbury on the Cole Stairs just before one o’clock on Sunday morning?”
Weatherspoon thought, then slowly nodded. “I did. He set on me with his whip. He struck at me first. I took the whip off him, and then he came at me like a vicious animal. He wasn’t going to stop until he had that whip and was beating me with it—according to him, like a misbegotten cur, until I was dead.”Weatherspoon lifted his huge shoulders in a faint shrug. “So I ended it. I had the whip in my hands, and I looped it about his throat and hung on. Didn’t have to do much more than that, and then he was dead, and I let his body slide into the water, threw that blasted whip away, and came home.”
Weatherspoon paused, then, his gaze level, went on. “Can’t say as I’m sorry. He was a blight on the lives of all hereabouts, and I’m glad he’s gone.”
Penelope glanced around, but no one protested. In fact, the comment elicited several small nods.
Barnaby, seated on Stokes’s other side, said, “You came to meet him at the stairs. Did you arrange that or did he?”
“He sent me a note by errand boy telling me to meet him there at half past twelve that night. He was late, but with him, that was par for the course. Lesser mortals had to wait on his convenience.”
“Do you have the note?” Stokes asked, his tone suggesting he held little hope of that.
But Weatherspoon nodded. “Aye. Happens I do.” He reached into his pocket and drew out a crumpled sheet. He regarded it for a moment. “Meant to throw it away, but didn’t get around to it.” He held it out over the table to Stokes. “For what it’s worth.”
Penelope suspected that as matters were unfolding, the note might be worth Weatherspoon’s life. If Sedbury had summoned him and come armed with a whip, which he’d used and, when denied, he’d refused to back away… That surely had to qualify as self-defense.
Stokes accepted the note, smoothed it out, read it, then handed it to Penelope, who was their writing expert. Swiftly, she scanned the bold strokes. “This is definitely in Sedbury’s hand.” For the others—including the one lurking in the shadows by the door—she read, “‘Meet me at the Cole Stairs at twelve-thirty on Sunday morning. I’m prepared to discuss your proposition.’”
Penelope looked at Weatherspoon, and before Stokes could, asked, “What proposition was that?”
Weatherspoon’s gaze shifted to Jonathon, seated a little way beyond Barnaby. Weatherspoon regarded Jonathon for a moment, then returned his attention to Barnaby, Stokes, and Penelope. It was to her he said, “I wrote to him last week. About my daughter, Millie.” He glanced again at Jonathon, then refocused on Penelope and said, “My wife died long ago, and Millie was all I had left. Back when I was the blacksmith in Rattenby village, when Millie was just blooming, I saw the interest yon lordling took in her, and then I heard she was getting airs above her station, thinking he’d take her to wife. I knew that wouldn’t happen—that nothing good would come of anything between the pair—so when I got a decent offer for the business, I took it, even though my folks had been blacksmiths there for generations. It was the only way I could see to keep Millie safe and give her something new to think about.” He paused, then added, “It worked, too. We traveled about a bit, then settled here. The money from the blacksmith’s and the extra the marquess had given us allowed me to buy this place. I enjoy company, and although some might think this neighborhood scruffy and down-at-heel, the people here welcomed us and made us feel at home. We were comfortable here.”
Then he grimaced. “Well, we were for the years before that devil came strutting around. He—Sedbury—started haunting the area, no idea why, but he’s been lording it over people hereabouts for the past two years at least.” Weatherspoon’s lip curled. “He was an animal. Might have been well-born, nobility and all, but he was a godforsaken animal beneath the skin. Any woman he fancied—anyone at all—he’d simply take. No question, and no such thing as saying no. He didn’t know the word. He behaved as if he was our feudal lord, and peopleseethed, but no one could work out what to do about him, marquess’s son that he was. And well he knew that, too—our resentment and our helplessness—and he rejoiced in that as well.”
Weatherspoon paused, and his face clouded with anger and grief. “Then he came in here about six months back and spotted Millie. She was just a girl, a good, sweet girl, and that set a match to Sedbury’s lust. I—and others about, too—tried our best to keep her safe—” Weatherspoon choked, then determinedly cleared his throat and went on, “He found her alone one day, and he…hurt her. Bad. She had to keep to her bed for more’n a week, just to stop the bleeding. And when she finally got back on her feet, she was never the same. She never recovered. And it came to the point of her not being able to live with what he’d done to her. She took herself off early one morning, while it was still dark, and threw herself into the river.”
He paused to wipe a hand beneath his nose. Not so much as a rustle of cloth sounded throughout the room.
“I raged, of course, and then I had so many around here consoling me and telling me their tales. Some were as bad as what he did to Millie. I’d known for a time that there were whispers about some of his doings, but I hadn’t heard the whole. But after Millie was gone, I listened to it all.” He looked squarely at all three Hales. “Your kin was a monster.”
It was Jonathon who, sympathy in his eyes, simply said, “We know.”
Weatherspoon studied him for a moment, then looked at Bryan and Claudia. He saw the empathy in their faces and nodded. “Aye. P’rhaps so.”
He paused as if gathering his thoughts, then went on, “After a time, I calmed down. I thought long and hard, then I wrote to Sedbury. I listed his crimes against us and asked for restitution. Payment in coin, not just for Millie but for all the others, too. Iwrote that if he didn’t pay up promptly, I’d take all the stories to Fleet Street and see who might be interested in printing them. I told him he had a week to decide, and he knew where to find me, but if I didn’t hear from him by Sunday night, I’d be on my way to Fleet Street the next day.”
Barnaby stirred. “So you weren’t surprised by his note asking you to meet him?”
Weatherspoon shook his head. “Not surprised, but I wasn’t born yesterday, either. I didn’t see the likes of him shaking in his boots—at least, not yet. I didn’t think he’d just turn up and pay, although I’m sure he’d’ve had the blunt for what we asked. Still and all, I wasn’t surprised he wanted to meet. I expected him to bluster and threaten, and I knew about his whip, so I wore the gauntlets I used in the smithy. I knew they’d stop a whip if he thought to take a crack at me. As he did.” He paused, then went on, “I was early to the meeting place. I wasn’t sure I trusted him to come alone, but he did. I was standing back in the shadows by the steps when he sauntered down and walked out on the stairs, cool as you please.”
In a mild tone, Stokes said, “You and the others around here could have come to the police with your stories.”
Weatherspoon snorted. “Not likely. What possible use would that have been? We’re just the rats from the docks, and he’s a fancy viscount. Even if you lot had believed us—and I’m not saying you wouldn’t have, given the number of stories we had to tell—you wouldn’t have even been allowed to talk to him. Or if you had, like as not, he’d have claimed it was all lies and turned you around and set you on us?—”
Weatherspoon’s gaze rose over Stokes’s head, and he blinked.
The rest of them turned and watched with varying degrees of surprise as the marquess walked out of the shadows of the entryway. He nodded to Weatherspoon. “Good morning,Weatherspoon.” Rattenby picked up a spare chair, lifted it to the table to Barnaby’s right, and sat.
Unsurprisingly uncomfortable, Weatherspoon warily inclined his head. “M’lord.”
With a glance at Barnaby, Stokes, and Penelope, in an even tone, the marquess said, “As to your expectation that complaints from locals would have fallen on deaf ears, I can’t be certain, yet at least in this instance concerning Sedbury, I believe that procedures have changed sufficiently that something would have been done.”
